A new framework to protect privacy

The country's top planning body the Planning Commission is working on a national privacy policy following fears of the civil society that the government was trying to get private information of individuals without enough safeguards. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 7, 2011, 24:07:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The country's top planning body the Planning Commission is working on a national privacy policy following fears of the civil society that the government was trying to get private information of individuals without enough safeguards.

The plan panel has constituted an expert group under the chairmanship of former chief justice of Delhi high court AP Shah to draft a legislative framework to ensure technical safeguards against misuse of the private information sought by the government for grounds of national security or delivery of welfare measures.

There are series of government projects that has privacy related issues.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is collecting biometric details of all residents under unique identification number or Aadhar scheme, which would eventually be linked to availing government's welfare schemes.

The home ministry has initiated National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) programme with an intention to ask telecom and Internet service providers to compulsorily link their databases with that of the government to check cyber related terror threats.

The Science and Technology ministry has drafted a DNA Profiling Bill for home ministry with an intention to create a genetic database of all persons arrested by police. If the person is acquitted, the draft law, says the DNA records of the person will be deleted from the official records.

The government's intention of creating Information Technology (IT) based database of individuals may be based on sound logic but many within the government had raised questions regarding it's misuse. Even the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has proposed a draft law on privacy has failed to convince the detractors within the government.

"We must now allow encroachment of individual's private details in name of identification or security. There have to be some safeguards for citizens to feel that the information will not be misused," minister of state for planning Ashwini Kumar told Hindustan Times recently.

The plan panel in the recent past had received several representations from citizen groups fearing misuse of the information sought and Kumar said the commission was looking at having technological safeguards to prevent "unreasoned, arbitrary and malicious" intrusion into private space of individuals.

The expert group headed by Shah has been asked to examine whether the IT platforms being used by different government agencies are compliant with different government rules and the Supreme Court judgments on privacy issues. The group is also considering the draft privacy law prepared by DoPT.

"We had a first meeting were some issues were discussed," Shah said and added that the entire gamut of privacy related issues with respect to legislative framework will be studied.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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